by Damien Lewis
Finally, the lead vehicle ground to a halt in the cloying darkness of a narrow mountain defile, the rest of the convoy following suit. This was where the road from hell ran out, and where Mat and his team would begin their epic climb.
For several days now, the brothers had been expecting a resupply of ammunition from the Taliban headquarters. Just after dawn Ali spotted a plume of dust to the east of them, backlit by the early-morning sun. Soon, he could hear the noise of approaching vehicles. It turned out to be a convoy of three battered Toyota pickups, one of which was painted a fluorescent green. The brothers who were driving it had obviously made no effort whatsoever to camouflage it, despite the ever-present danger of attack from US aircraft that were patrolling the Afghan skies.
Just as the three pickups were rolling into camp, out of nowhere there was a Whoosh! above them, followed by the roar of a US jet tearing past overhead.
‘Fighters!’ one of the brothers yelled, his words lost in a massive explosion.
As the dust cleared from the bomb blast Ali could see that the pilot had overshot his target, but only just. The US warplane started screaming around for another attack run on the pickups, and the brothers began unloading in a mad frenzy. Weapons – RPG rounds, cases of AK47 ammunition, grenades – rucksacks and food were thrown into a heap on the ground. Just as the last bundle had been offloaded the fluorescent green pickup roared off, and the jet came in for its second attack run. Ali hit the deck just as there was an ear-splitting detonation, the bomb impacting right where the green pickup had been a second earlier. Ali could feel the shrapnel flying past him as he buried his head in the sand. When he finally glanced up he could see the pickup still miraculously intact and weaving crazily as it roared off into the desert. And behind him a group of brothers were standing around laughing, seemingly completely unperturbed by the US bombing.
‘Welcome to the front line,’ one of them called over at Ali. He was a big, bearded brother whom Ali hadn’t met before. He helped Ali to his feet and to dust himself down. ‘Come, brother, come and join us for breakfast,’ the bearded one continued. ‘Don’t worry about the bombs. Who taught these infidels how to fight, anyway? Their mothers? This is nothing to worry about. And if they get lucky, well, then you’ll be shaheed! Seventy-two virgins, brother. Come, brother. Pitta. Some roast goat. You helped us unloading. Now, come and eat with us like a true brother.’
As the men led Ali over to their position, it was immediately clear to him that morale was very high among their unit. They were positioned on the crest of a hill overlooking a shallow valley. To their left and right along the ridge there were further Taliban positions. But higher above them, on the next mountaintop, the US-backed Northern Alliance had their forces. Ali figured that it must have been these Northern Alliance troops who had spotted the fluorescent green pickup from their vantage point, and called in the US air strike.
Ali was amazed, and somewhat concerned, when the brothers proceeded to serve breakfast out in the open, despite there being a secure underground bunker nearby. And in no time, the Northern Alliance forces spotted them. They started to target the breakfast party with a long-range howitzer, calling in the shots from their vantage point high above. The incoming fire wasn’t that accurate, but the barrage was gradually creeping closer, and Ali could tell that the gunners were zeroing in on their position. But the brothers just sat there eating and made no mention of the bombardment, and it was as if they were playing a game of chicken with each other.
Ali took his plate of food and sat down with his back to a large rock, which gave him a small sense of security. Another brother joined him and they struck up a conversation. He could feel the man’s shoulder against his, the reverberations of his voice box rumbling on and on as he talked about the glory of jihad. It turned out that this brother had been on the front line for many months now, and refused to be relieved. He loved it here, he told Ali, because it was the one place where he really felt alive. He started to tell Ali all about his family back home in Algeria. Then he began asking Ali all about life in the West – which seemed to hold a strange fascination for so many of the brothers.
It was a special moment for Ali and he suddenly felt very close to his Algerian brother. But just as he started telling him all about his life back in the UK, there was the scream of another incoming shell. For a second Ali flinched as the round slammed into the desert some fifty feet away from them, jagged chunks of shrapnel whirring off in all directions. The explosion was deafening and it threw up chunks of rock high into the air. For a few seconds Ali and his brother sat there in silence, watching the smoke and dust from the shell drifting into the air.
‘That was a close one, brother,’ Ali remarked, before returning to their conversation.
Ali told the brother about his life in the UK and how glad he was to be away from it all, from the self-indulgence and depravity of the decadent West. He described his deep abhorrence of a British society where worshipping God had been replaced by worshipping football, money and sex; a society that encouraged homosexuality; where morals had been abandoned in preference for drugs, alcohol and debauchery; where family values were collapsing and where so many children were born to illegitimate, women-only families. As he talked Ali was swept away by a wave of revulsion. As far as he was concerned there was only one thing that could save the West from destroying itself. It required a total conversion – by force, if necessary – of all its people to Islam, and strict adherence to the codes of Islamic sharia law. The UK needed to be remade along the lines of Afghanistan.
But as he spoke, Ali started to notice that his brother wasn’t responding. His brother wasn’t saying a word in reply, and he couldn’t feel him nodding or reacting. Come to think of it, Ali couldn’t feel him breathing, either. And there was also something odd about the way this brother was sitting. Slowly, Ali turned to check if he was all right. As he did so, he twisted around, removing the support of his shoulder, and the brother slumped away, falling sideways on to the ground. He lay there, unmoving, his eyes open and glazed. Then Ali caught sight of a jagged rent torn in the side of the brother’s head, a rivulet of fresh blood running down his temple and into the sand. The man was dead, killed by a fragment of shrapnel thrown up by the exploding shell.
How do I feel? Ali asked himself, as he stared down at the corpse of this brother – his newest and so short-lived friend. Sad that he’s dead? Elated because he’s shaheed? Or enraged, and in need of revenge? Ali knew that he had been that close to being killed himself. That razor-sharp chunk of shrapnel had torn into his brother’s head right next to his own. Am I glad that it’s him that’s been killed and not me? Ali wondered. But most of all he was frustrated and angry that the brother’s life had been thrown away so needlessly – before he’d had a chance to fight and to kill any of the kafir. It was such a pointless waste and could have been so easily avoided.
That evening, Ali brought this up in conversation with Ahmed, Sadiq and the rest of the brothers in his unit. Why did the brothers here on the front line never take cover? Didn’t they want to fight the kafir and kill them, and to defend the Umma – the greater body of Islam – from the Jews and the Crusaders invading the Muslim lands? Or did they all just want to be snuffed out at the first available opportunity? But the brothers replied that if it was Allah’s will, then they would be taken out by a shell or a bomb or a bullet and be shaheed. Or if it was Allah’s will that they should survive and fight, then they would survive and fight. It was all in the will of the Almighty Allah.
Ali said that he had a different view on things. His mission in being there was clear: it was to wage jihad against the infidel invaders of a Muslim country. The best way to do that and better serve Allah was to keep himself alive and fighting fit, not to sit under the first shell that came along. Ali quoted the Prophet’s words at the brothers: ‘Do for your living life as if you will never die; do for your late life as if you will die tomorrow.’ The meaning was clear, Ali explained: it meant that this life w
as precious and the brothers should not squander it needlessly. He was here with one mission: to kill the infidel Americans and their lapdogs, the British.
5
DEATH VALLEY
MAT GLANCED AT his watch. It was twelve midnight. They had seven hours to go before dawn, during which they had to cover eight miles and some 15,000 feet of ascent. After the comparative warmth of the Humvee the Afghan night was chilling. But Mat and his men knew that once they started the climb the exertion would keep them warm. Every inch of terrain ahead of them now was hostile territory. If they didn’t make the mountain peak and the comparative safety of their observation position by daybreak, then they were in trouble. According to their intelligence, the Naka Valley was crawling with the terrorist enemy. If Mat and his small team ran into them in broad daylight, he had few illusions about who was more likely to win any firefight. They may have been Britain’s (and America’s) finest special forces, but they were not superhuman.
As each man helped his mate on with his massive backpack, they were reminded just how horribly heavy their bergens were. As soon as they were ready, Mat led the team some hundred yards away from the mountain track that the vehicle convoy had been following. Once the seven of them were in a position of cover, they dropped to the ground. Mat then gave the pre-arranged signal using his infrared torch to let the US vehicle convoy know that they were free to return to base.
Down below them, the Humvees and Toyota pickups began executing awkward three-point turns, their engines snarling and revving in the darkness. Finally, when all the vehicles were pointing back the way they had come, they began to crawl down the valley floor and away from the watching special forces soldiers. As the convoy rounded the far corner of the valley, the noise of the engines faded into the night. Silence descended upon Mat and his six fellow patrol members. Immediately after being dropped at the start of a mission was one of the most dangerous times for a covert patrol. Any enemy in the region could easily have detected their arrival and be poised to attack.
As the men squatted in the darkness, each with their bergens propped against a boulder, they strained their ears to catch any sound that might indicate that they had been compromised: the soft crunch of a sandalled foot on gravel; the clink of an AK47 magazine against a webbing belt; a faint cough, strangled in the dense mountain blackness. But all they could hear was their own, laboured breathing pounding in their ears. It seemed that they were alone out there in that dark valley. As his eyes adjusted to the faint moonlight filtering down to the valley floor, Mat searched the hillside for the best route up on to the ridgeline high above them.
After some fifteen minutes waiting, watching and listening – soaking up the night-dark atmosphere and acclimatising to their new environment – Mat got to his feet and signalled for the others to follow him. During that short wait, the cold had already started to seep into his limbs and he knew that he had to get his legs moving before they seized up. The men swung their packs around on their backs one last time, just to check for any rattles or clinks that might betray their passing – and then they set out into the unknown. Sam took point, heading off on a bearing due west, and Mat brought up the rear. Mat put CIA Bob in the middle of the column, surrounded by the Team 6 lads, where he would be best protected. The patrol was operating on ‘silent routine’ now, which meant that all communications would be by hand signals only, unless absolutely necessary.
SBS standard operating procedures for this sort of patrol make it the man in front’s responsibility not to lose sight of the man directly to his rear. But Mat’s team were now employing an old trick to help keep the patrol together. Each man had attached a compass to the rear of his bergen. The faint luminosity of the dial would show up just enough for the man behind to keep track of the guy in front of him. As the seven men started to climb out of the valley, each footstep shifted the balance of their packs slightly, making the bergens creak alarmingly. In the deathly still night air sounds like this would be audible for hundreds of yards. But there was nothing the men could do about it. The heavy loads they were carrying were about as silenced as they could possibly make them.
From his position at the rear of the column, Mat began to wonder just what they had let themselves in for with this mission. Barely thirty minutes into the climb and already his shoulders were on fire as he hauled his pack up the steep incline. Prior to departure, there had been an animated debate among the men as to whether they should make the climb using NVGs, to help find their way. Mat had been adamant that they should not: using goggles over a seven-hour period would put an unbearable strain on the eyes, as well as eating up their supply of batteries. And so they had opted against NVGs.
As he climbed, Mat’s eyes adjusted to the darkness remarkably well and he found that he could make out most of the detail of the surrounding terrain. During the Afghan spring, the valley would become a raging torrent swollen by melt waters from the snowfields above. But now it was the dry, cold season and just a thin sliver of water snaked its way along the valley floor. The men trudged ever upwards, scrub and thorn trees tearing at their clothing. As they continued to climb, the terrain underfoot became a moonscape of broken rock interspersed with larger boulders, with here and there a stunted pine tree looming out of the darkness. Many of the trees were no taller than the patrol members: it was hardly surprising, as the dry, cold earth offered little in terms of shelter or nutrients.
The first hour of the climb passed without incident and finally the patrol reached the ridge, which marked the limit of the river valley. Beyond lay a series of higher ridges, stretching away to their final destination, the mountain peak now towering some 8,000 feet above them. From here on in, Mat reminded himself, the going would only get tougher. But his greatest worry was fast becoming the lack of water. After leaving the river bed, they had yet to come across another water source: neither mountain spring nor stagnant pool relieved the unrelenting dryness of the terrain. No doubt about it, Mat reflected, this was a harsh, unforgiving landscape; it was hardly surprising that it had spawned a harsh, unforgiving people; and maybe it took a harsh, unforgiving mission like this one to get the better of them.
The patrol crested the ridge and descended into a plunging valley. On the far side, they began climbing again, and the ascent now was even steeper, the slope rising up before them at a sixty-degree angle. In places Mat found himself bent double as he tried to stop himself from overbalancing and being dragged backwards down the mountainside. At the same time he was prevented from grabbing hold of any boulders or undergrowth to help haul himself upwards because he had his weapon gripped in his hands. He wondered how the rest of his team were faring.
Eventually, the inevitable happened. One of the Team 6 lads up ahead of Mat must have put a foot wrong, and suddenly he went tumbling and crashing down the mountainside. Rocks and debris dislodged by the fall went clattering past Mat, the sound deafening in the deathly still mountain air. After he’d fallen some fifty yards, the SBS soldier had his momentum broken by a tree.
As the rest of the patrol waited for him to rejoin them they were glad of the few minutes’ break. Mat rested the weight of his bergen against a rock and pondered their predicament. Any enemy in the immediate area would certainly have heard the racket made by that fall. The only way that he could think of to make the going any easier was to ditch some of the weight in their bergens, which wasn’t really an option, or to free up their hands to help with the climb. But it was a cardinal rule among the SBS that an operator should never let go of his weapon. He should eat with it, sleep with it, walk with it and always have it to hand. They would have to press on as best they could.
Unfortunately, the going kept getting worse. As they climbed ever higher, the rock strata began changing. The boulders and gravel gave way to hard-packed fields of black, flint-like rock. All too often, it was smooth underfoot and difficult to get a grip with their boots, and in places the incline worsened to some seventy degrees. Straightening up momentarily on one of the worst
stretches, Mat realised that he’d overdone it and that his bergen was pulling him backwards. Reacting on instinct, he dropped his Diemaco and made a desperate grab for the nearest tree. As his assault rifle went clattering to the ground, his hand found a branch, and for a split second it checked his fall. But then there was a sharp crack as the branch broke, and Mat felt himself going over, the weight of his bergen dragging him off his feet and down the precipitous slope below him.
For several seconds Mat went plummeting down the hillside, his body a flurry of arms and legs and backpack and webbing. Finally, he came to rest where a massive boulder blocked his fall. Luckily, his bergen took the brunt of the impact. But Mat still felt a juddering pain stabbing up through the base of his neck, and for a moment he blacked out. As he came to, his first instinct was to look for his weapon. But as he glanced back up the slope he caught sight of a mini avalanche of rocks tumbling down towards him. As the hard, black, igneous rocks went smashing into each other, they sent showers of white sparks shooting into the darkness. It was one of the weirdest sights Mat had ever seen. He buried his head in the dirt to shield himself from the falling rocks. As he did so, he reflected on the fact that here they were in the middle of hostile territory on a covert mission, yet he’d just set off a massive mountainside firework display.
Once it seemed like the avalanche was over, Mat risked a glance upwards again. Sure enough, the rockfall appeared to have stopped. He could see a faint line of luminous green lights glowing in the darkness up ahead – the compasses of the rest of his team sat atop their bergens. The lads had stopped and were waiting for him. Using the boulder as leverage he hauled himself to his feet, checked for any signs of damage and then went in search of his weapon. If he remembered correctly, he’d hurled it away from his body into a little natural depression to the right of him. As Mat retraced his steps, one of his biggest worries was if all the camera gear in his pack had survived the fall.
